Fresh off winning an NBA title and signing a record contract extension over the weekend, Jayson Tatum arrived in Sin City for his first Team USA training camp practice Monday with a fresh haircut and feeling like a weight was lifted off his shoulders.
“A hundred percent,” Tatum said, shortly after participating in his first practice here after being excused from the opening two days of preparation for the Paris Olympic Games.
“Just being at the topic of discussion of so many debates or whatever it is … ‘Can he lead a team? Is he a top-five player?’
“There’s still a lot of things I guess they can debate. But now I’ve done something that they can’t debate.
I’ve won a championship. Having that under my belt, like obviously it’s still conversations to be had or whatever people want to say, but they always got to refer to me as an NBA champion.”
There’s no arguing that, after Tatum and the Celtics followed up leading the NBA with 64 regular-season victories by going 16-3 in the postseason — second only to the 16-1 mark by the 2017 Golden State Warriors in terms of playoff winning percentage since the league went to four seven-game rounds in the playoffs.
Tatum said the championship parade last month was “the best two hours of my life” and that it was hard to explain how “insane” the atmosphere and energy were in the city that day as Boston reveled in passing its forever rivals, the Los Angeles Lakers, to become the NBA leader with 18 championships.
But if anyone was thinking that the Celtics — specifically, coach Joe Mazzulla — would be relaxing after winning that first championship, Tatum made it clear that wouldn’t be happening.
